Patent systems were originally put in place to stop inventors hoarding ideas that would help society at large. Open source is the ultimate share - there is inherently no hoarding taking place. So, if you manage to release something under a recognised open source license, should the work be immune from patent claims anyway? Sometimes wonder what the world would be like if patent systems were all killed off completely anyway, but that's a longer story.

There are various flavours of Debian and Fedora that have Python and Scratch already there to use. Not forgetting XBMC and OpenELEC provided as a free standing, auto updated Debian distribution. This little beasty can drive full 1080p video already :-)

I recall Microsofts International VP, Scott Oki, tapping away on his Model 100 when he visited us at DEC in 1983. I had the privilege of taking Paul Maritz, now of VMware, into seeing my CEO in 2011, and while waiting for my CEO, got chatting about iPads. I mentioned Scott Oki, and he said he remembered Scott going everywhere with that Tandy TRS 80 Model 100. Wasn't it actually made by Kyocera?

Given the price of ARM based boards (and some MIPS based ones) are below $25, run Linux really well and have 100+ factories churning them out in at least one area of China, I think Intel have over cooked their target price.

See: http://opensource.com/life/12/1/linux-hardware-race-tiniest-and-cheapest-15-cheap

Clearly, the display will be a big cost, and integrating it as one system will add more cost, but it feels like Intel will be considerably more expensive at their published price points. I'll guess at 50% higher.

Any ideas if all the work at Sugar Labs will work on this remix within the current memory size constraints of a Raspberry Pi?

I seem to recall an Apple Store employee managing to connect using BacktoMac to her stolen Mac and remotely taking a picture. Only gotcha was the count down to the pic being taken appearing on the screen in front of the thief. She did recognise the guy as someone who came with friends to a party at her house, and duly got her machine back. At the time, needed MobileMe to work...

My wife is a Lush customer, ordered online in the time period described and did have 2 £15 charges (total just north of $40) for prepay mobile phone credit debited from her account. She spotted that virtually immediately; however, her bank just wanted to snail mail post a claim form to her to get her money back, and O2 (the mobile phone company providing the goods from the fraudulent two transactions) said it was an industry agreed procedure to wait until the bank got in touch with them before they'd do anything. So, bottom line, the thieves have 5 days to use the credit they stole, when O2 could have invalided the transaction immediately and/or aimed some trace to the person using that mobile handset. About as much use as a cow on stilts. We need a Bill Bratton methinks. Follow the money, get to the source.

I was at Cloudforce 2010 London when Marc Benioff said this. You can hear the comment yourself - videos of the presentations are on YouTube. It was a comment that he could see some of the interactions solving customer problems, and he could see some patterns at who were consistently the people who sorted customer problems out well and often. No sophisticated analytics. No big brother. Just a CEO who gained the ability to know what is really happening in his company and who's doing good work. Kudos to him. He and his company seem to be doing a spectularly good job, and Chatter (a sorta Facebook UI for business use) will keep it ahead. Ian W.